The day I have waited months in anticipation for is finally here, Adobe CS5 is officially public.  While it does not hit shelves until the 3rd of May, you can do what I did and download a copy of the entire Master Collection off of the Adobe website.  You can use the demo for 30 days or enter a license once you have purchased it, no need to reinstall.

There are so many wonderful improvements in CS5 that I can’t even begin to scratch the surface.  All of the programs run natively in 64 bit mode for one thing, making them far more responsive and able to render nearly all effects and filters in real time.  Photoshop also added some amazing features like content aware fill , 3d brushes / paint mixing, and puppet warp.  Plus Photoshop now has better built in HDR processing… which I just HAD to play around with first thing today.  Below are some pictures I took downtown using multiple exposures and the new HDR features.

Even while quickly slapping together these photos I found all the new features greatly sped up my workflow.  I can’t wait to dig into the rest of CS5′s Master Collection to see how my illustration, video editing, and audio editing workflows will be affected.  Oh and just in case any of you missed out on the launch video, here it is.  It covers quite a few of the new features in all of the programs included in the Master Collection.